At Sony Production studios in Culver City, an area of Los Angeles steeped in the movie business, a steady stream of cars and lorries comes and goes through the security gate.

It occupies the MGM lot which dates back to 1924. Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane were shot here and, more recently, Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises. But this is no longer the beating heart of movie making.

In Tinsel Town the bright lights of the film industry have been fading for some time. Production in Hollywood has fallen by 40% in the last decade, sometimes moving to other states like New Mexico, New York and Georgia, but more often outside the US entirely.

A recent survey of film and TV executives indicates that Britain, Australia and Canada are now favoured locations over California when it comes to making movies.

San Andreas, a blockbuster film about a California earthquake, was shot in Australia. In America, a film about an Irish family settling in New York, was shot in Canada.

Trump’s movie tariff could deal knock-out blow to UK film industry, union says

The exodus of the film industry from Hollywood is mostly owing to economic reasons, with other countries boasting lower labour costs and more expansive tax incentives. But as productions have moved overseas, studios across Los Angeles are frequently empty and those who work behind the scenes are often out of work.

President Trump has approached this problem with a familiar reaction – sweeping tariffs, a 100% tariff on all foreign made films coming into the USA.

‘It’s a different kind of situation than producing cars overseas’

Justine Bateman is a filmmaker and sister of actor Jason Bateman. She is glad Trump is looking for solutions but does not understand how the tariffs will work. “I will say, I’m very glad to hear that President Trump is interested in helping the film business. But part of the problem is we just don’t have very much detail, do we?,” she says.

“He’s made this big announcement, but we don’t have the detail to really mull over. He doesn’t even say whether it’s going to be films that are shown in the cinema or streaming movies, for example.

“Tariffs can be a profitable situation for when we’re just talking about hard goods, but something like a film and, particularly if you’ve got an American film that takes place in the south of France, you want to be in a particular location.

“So it’s a different kind of situation than producing cars overseas and bringing them back here.”

At the Hand Prop Room in Los Angeles, they supply props for TV and film. The warehouse is brimful of virtually any prop you could imagine, from portraits of former presidents, to replica handguns to African artefacts and 18th century teapots. The walls are decorated with posters from some of the productions they’ve supplied, including Babylon, Oppenheimer and Ghostbusters.

‘It needs to be thought through’

In the past five years, the prop shop has been impacted by the COVID pandemic, by both the writers’ and actors’ strikes and the globalisation of the film industry. Business is at an all time low.

“It’s not helping when so many productions are not just leaving the state, but also leaving the country,” says Reynaldo Castillo, the general manager of the Hand Prop Room. “It’s Hollywood, we have the infrastructure that nobody else has and I think maybe to a certain point we took it for granted.

“I think we can all agree that we want more filming to stay in the country to help promote jobs. But you also don’t want to do something to hurt it.

“How does it work? Are there exceptions for X, Y, and Z? What about independent movies that have small budgets that are shot somewhere else that would destroy their ability to make something? It needs to be thought through and make sure it’s implemented the right way.”

Some of the world’s most famous names have arrived at the Met Gala in New York for what has become known as the biggest night in fashion.

Each year A-list celebrities provide plenty of talking points as they pose for the world’s press in outfits that are often as stylish as they are bizarre.

The annual event ushers in the spring exhibit for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with this year’s theme of “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” celebrating the style, politics and history of the way black men dress.

Diana Ross, Lewis Hamilton, Sabrina Carpenter and Alicia Keys are among the celebrities in attendance.

Here are some of the best outfits from the Met Gala 2025 so far.

US President Donald Trump has called for the reopening of notorious prison Alcatraz.

In a post on his social media site Truth Social, Mr Trump said America had been “plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat criminal offenders”.

He added that when the United States was “a more serious nation” it “did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals”.

“That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz, to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders,” he wrote.

Mr Trump said the reopening of the San Francisco prison would “serve as a symbol of law, order, and justice”.

The US president’s latest policy announcement comes after he fired national security adviser Mike Waltz last week in the first major change to his administration.

Alcatraz was infamously inescapable and in the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI.

Nearly all of them were caught or did not survive the attempt at escaping.

The prison housed some of America’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone and George Kelly.

It has also been the subject of a number of films, including The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.

Alcatraz Island, which is surrounded by strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters, is now a major tourist site, operated by the National Park Service.

The prison’s closure in 1963 was attributed to crumbling infrastructure and high repair costs.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said it would “comply with all presidential orders”.

The Bureau of Prisons currently has 16 high-security prisons, including its maximum-security facility in Florence, Colorado, and a facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is home to the federal death chamber.

The United States’ federal law enforcement agency has been the subject of increased scrutiny in recent years after Jeffrey Epstein‘s suicide at a federal jail in New York City in 2019.